Harbour Grace - History Briefs

History Briefs

• The first English account of the capture of St. John's by the French came from Harbour Grace Island in 1708.

• The Harbour Grace Court House, constructed in 1830, is the oldest surviving public building in the province and a National Historic Site of Canada.

• St. Paul's Anglican Church in Harbour Grace was built in 1835, making it the oldest stone church in Newfoundland and Labrador.

• The annual Harbour Grace Regatta is the second oldest continuing sporting event in North America; it was started in 1862.

• The first railway line in Newfoundland was completed to Harbour Grace in 1884.

• Amelia Earhart took flight from Harbour Grace on May 20, 1932, to become the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic.

• Laurence Coughlan, credited as the founder of Methodism in Newfoundland, laid the foundations of Newfoundland's first Methodist movement when he served as an Anglican priest in Harbour Grace from 1766 to 1773.

• Harbour Grace has a long and rich history in the sport of hockey. Newfoundland's first NHL player, Bishop's Falls native Alex Faulkner, came from the Harbour Grace-based Conception Bay Cee Bees hockey team in 1960. His brother, and former Cee Bees captain, George Faulkner was the scoring leader of the 1966 Canadian National Hockey team where they took Bronze at the World Hockey Championship in Ljubljana, Slovenia (former Yugoslavia). Other NHL players to have been part of the Cee Bees line up were Gary Simmons and Lyle Carter. The Cee Bees/Cee Bee Stars have won the senior provincial Hockey championship 7 times beginning in 1960. The Cee Bees "old timers" have won gold in Division "A" of the World Old-timer’s League on two occasions. Harbour Grace native Daniel Cleary became the first NHL player from Newfoundland and Labrador to win the Stanley Cup in 2008.